The Campaign for the Elections to the Fourth Duma

III. THE PEASANTRY AND THE PEASANT ELECTORS IN THE ELECTION
CAMPAIGN

Inthe preceding article (Zvezda, No. 34) we
discussed the role of the worker electors in the election campaign. The
long and the short of our reflections was that working-class democrats are
faced by a vital twofold task—to unite the class of wage-workers,
developing their class—consciousness, their understanding of the great
historical objectives of their class, and then to organise the forces of

			      democracy.[1]

Letus now examine the question of non-proletarian, i.e., bourgeois,
democracy. What is its principal class basis in Russia? What are its
specific features, its immediate tasks? What is its role in the elections?

Theprincipal class support for Russian bourgeois democracy is the
peasantry. The condition of the great bulk of the peasantry is so
burdensome, the oppression of the landowners so heavy, the economic
conditions so desperately bad, and its lack of civil rights so
extraordinarily great, that democratic feelings and desires are springing
up among them with an elusive spontaneous inevitability. The way out of the
situation which the bourgeois liberals (with the Cadet Party at their head)
picture to themselves—the sharing of power with the Purishkeviches, the
joint rule of the Purishkeviches and the Guchkovs (or the Milyukovs) over
the masses—cannot satisfy the peasant millions. That is why the class
position of the peasantry, on the one hand, and of the big bourgeoisie, on
the other, inevitably creates a wide gulf between democrats and liberals.

Asa rule, neither of the two political trends is clearly defined,
neither is a fully conscious one, but it is a fact that the peasantsgravitatetowards democracy, the bourgeoisie towards monarchist
liberalism; this was proved to the hilt during the extremely eventful first
decade of the twentieth century in Russia. Not only did the peasant masses
display their democracy in the liberation movement of 1905, and in the
First and Second Dumas, but even in the nobility-dominated Third Duma;forty-threepeasant deputies, including Rights and independents,
introduced an agrarian billwhich was more democratic than that introduced by the Cadets.

Ingeneral, the land problem is the main problem of the Russian
peasantry today. Less than30, 000landowners in
European Russia possess 70 million dessiatines of land, and practically the
same amount is held by 10 million poor peasant households. On the one hand,
an average of 2,300 dessiatines per farm; on the other, an average of seven
dessiatines. At the present level of Russia’s historical development, this
could lead to but one economic result—the most widespread practice of all
sorts of “labour-service” economy, that is to say, of survivals of the
old corvée system. Peasants held in bondage, poverty such as has not
been seen in Europe for many years, and periodic famines reminiscent of the
Middle Ages, are consequences of this state of affairs.

TheCadet bourgeoisie seeks to settle the agrarian problem in a liberal
fashion, so as to preserve the landed estates, selling part of the land to
the peasantry at “a fair price”, and giving the landowners the upper hand
over the peasants in the bodies effecting the “reform”. Naturally, the
peasants would certainly prefer a democratic solution of the agrarian
problem. This democratic solution, even if all the land is transferred to
the peasants without compensation, does not and cannot in the least
encroach on the foundations of capitalist society—the power of money,
commodity production, and the domination of the market. The peasants, for
the most part, have a rather hazy idea of the matter and the Narodniks have
created a complete ideology, a whole doctrine, which gave that haze
something of a “socialist” hue, although there is nothing socialist even
in the most radical agrarian revolution.

But,in practice, as the peasant movement grows in volume and in
strength, the influence of this hazy conception diminishes, and the real,
democratic, substance of the agrarian wishes and demands of the peasants
becomes more pronounced. In this sphere, and even more so in the sphere of
political questions, of paramount importance is the role played by
working-class democracy and its struggle to prevent the submission of the
peasants to liberal leadership. It will be no exaggeration to say that
there is a very close connection between the successes of Russian democracy
asa whole, those of the past and those yet to come, and the transfer of the
political leadership of the peasantry from the liberals to working-class
democracy. Unless this leadership passes to the working class, Russian
democracy cannot hope to attain any more or less serious successes.

Theelectoral law of June 3, 1907, as we know, made the greatest
“inroads” upon the suffrage of the peasants. We need only remind the
readers that that law provided for an increase from 1,952 to 2,594, or 32.9
per cent in the number of electors sent by the landowners, while the number
of electors from the peasants and Cossacks was reduced to less than a half,
from 2,659 to 1,168, or by 56.1 per cent. In addition, the law of June 3,
1907, provides that the deputies to the Duma from the peasant curia
(officially designated:

“from conventions of delegates from

			       volosts[2]”)

are not to be chosen by the peasant electors alone, as was the case
previously, but by the entire electoral assembly of each gubernia, that is
to say, by bodies in which landowners and big capitalists predominate.

Thisbeing the procedure, the peasant democrats (Trudoviks) can secure
seats in the Duma only ifallthe peasant electors, without a
single exception, are Trudoviks. In that case the Bight landowners will be
compelled to elect Trudoviks from the peasant curia, just as they have been
compelled to elect Social-Democrats from the worker curia. However,
solidarity, organisation, and class-consciousness are naturally much less
developed among the peasants than among the workers. Thus there still
remains an almost untapped field of serious and rewarding work of political
education. And it is this sphere of activity that should command the main
attention of all democrats and all Marxists who “go among all classes of
the

			    population”,[3]and not that of making advances to and flirting with the counter
revolutionary liberals (the Cadets), a sphere that has become a favourite
one with the liquidators onNasha Zarya, etc.

Wepointed out in the preceding article that in the elections to the
Third Duma the peasant curia proved to be the most democratic of the
non-proletarian curias. Out of53 deputies elected to the Third Duma from the peasant curia, 26, or 49
per cent, were members of the opposition; whereas in the case of the second
urban curia (the second assembly of urban voters), only 12 out of 28, or 43
per cent, were members of the opposition. The number of democrats elected
to the Third Duma from the peasant curia was 5 out of 53, or 10 per cent;
whereas in the case of the second urban Curia, their number was 2 out of
28, or 7 per cent.

Itis worth while examining which gubernias elected representatives of
the opposition from the peasant curia and what was the composition of all
the deputies elected by each of them to the Third Duma. Of the 53
gubernias, in each of which the law provides for the election of one deputy
from the peasant curia, 23 sentRights(including Octobrists) as
representatives of the peasant curia, 17 sentliberals(Cadets,
Progressists, and Moslems), and only five sentdemocrats(Trudoviks). In eight gubernias independent peasants were elected.

Oncloser examination we see thatnot a singleone of the
gubernias which elected a majority of Right deputies to the Third Duma sent
a democrat to represent the peasant curia. Democrats (Trudoviks) were
elected only in those gubernias where no Right deputies were
returned. These five gubernias—Archangel, Vyatka, Perm, Stavropol, and
Tomsk—are represented in the Third Duma by 15 liberals, 8 Trudoviks, and
3 Social-Democrats. There is hardly any room for doubt that, had the
peasants and the workers in these gubernias been more class-conscious and
better organised, it would have been possible to increase, at the expense
of the liberals, the proportion of democrats elected.

Itmay not be perhaps amiss to point out here that altogether 24
gubernias sent a majority of opposition deputies to the Third Duma. In 18
of these 24 only opposition deputies were elected. In all, these 24
gubernias are represented in the Duma by 9 Right deputies, 2 independents,
55 liberals, 14 Trudoviks, and 8 Social-Democrats. The reader will thus
readily see that there is a fairly widespread opportunity to increase the
proportion of democratic deputies at the expense of the liberals and, in
general, to win the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry away from their
influence.

Itis interesting to note further that in 10 gubernias out of the 17
which elected liberals from the peasant curia, the Rights gained more seats
than the opposition. We must therefore assume that, as a rule,there
were no Rights at allamong the peasant electors in these gubernias,
for if there had been, the Right majorities in the gubernia electoral
assemblies would surely have elected them....

Theduty of the working-class democrats with regard to the peasants in
the elections is perfectly clear. They must carry their purely class
propaganda to a peasantry that is becoming proletarianised. They must help
the peasants to unite their forces in the elections to enable them, even on
the basis of the June Third electoral law, to send to the Fourth Duma theirownrepresentatives in as large numbers as possible despite the
obstacles put in their way both by the supporters of the old regime and by
the liberals. They must strive to consolidate the leadership of
working-class democrats and explain the great harm caused by the
vacillation of the peasant democrats toward the liberals.

[1]Seep. 372 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]Seefootnote to p. 88.—Ed.

[3]Seepresent edition, Vol. 5, p. 468.—Ed.